Tillerson didn't strike me as generally inept, and mostly garden variety evil. A typical good-old-boy's-club tycoon type. As Secretary of State, he came across mostly as a guy who didn't feel like trying.

I don't know anything at all about Pompeo, but I fear Gina Haspel is evil incarnate.

Meanwhile, the centrist Democrat candidate in a congressional district Trump carried by 20 percentage points may have won the representative seat in their special election. The results aren't final, yet, and are close enough that a recount may be mandated.

Pompeo was a Trump firebreather advocating close ties to Russia when he was in Congress. F.A.Z. writes, that, apparently, he won over a dispirited staff at the CIA, listening to them and showing some respect. Maybe he can pull that off as Secretary as well - learning a fewe things about Russia, allies, and reliability on the way. Things Tillerson didn't, and didn't want to learn.

CNN is reporting that the FBI executed search warrants at Michael Cohen's office today. For those of you playing along at home, Michael Cohen is the lawyer who allegedly mortgaged his house and set up an LLC to pay $130,000 to Stephanie Clifford (aka Stormy Daniels) for....reasons which were not at all related to her claims that she had an affair with Trump.

Asked about the Daniels controversy last week, Trump said he did not know about the payment and declined to comment further, instead referring questions to Cohen."You'll have to ask Michael Cohen," Trump said. "Michael is my attorney. You'll have to ask Michael."

To which the FBI has apparently replied "Don't mind if we do."

Edit: I should have worded the "not having anything to do with..." section differently. I think the argument is that Cohen and Trump say that Clifford's claims are false, but that Cohen decided to pay Clifford to be quiet, anyway. In other words, it had everything to do with the claims. Mea culpa. However, it will be most interesting to see if any of the documents seized will prove or disprove Clifford's claims, and whether or not the payoff was just Cohen's idea. In the end, I don't suppose that it will make much of a difference; if Clinton getting a blowjob in the Oval Office didn't get him impeached, I doubt having an affair long before becoming President will have any real impact on Trump.

Edit #2: I forgot - whom doing whom and when not withstanding, the payoff may have been illegal. So, there's that, I guess.

If Cohen made a payment on behalf of Trump it probably violates campaign funding laws.

The issue here is that Trump is relying on a non-disclosure agreement to keep Ms Daniels quiet. Trump says he knows nothing about it, Cohen didn't sign the deed either as an individual or as an agent so it is in fact simply a piece of paper. Or in legal terms "a worthless piece of paper". This means that Ms Daniels can do and say what she likes until Trump goes to court to try and enforce the NDA. This isn't someone suing Trump, this is Trump having to sue someone else. After many years of Trump simply saying "So what, what are you going to do about it?" this is Ms Daniels and Avenatti saying just that to Trump.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.....So this Michael Cohen thing is good for something, anyway.On Friday, Cohen's legal team argued that they need to go through all the documents seized by the FBI to remove any that would constitute attorney-client privilege between Cohen and his hundreds or perhaps even thousands of other clients besides Trump. The judge, rightfully smelling something putrid asked them to come up with the actual number of clients. They immediately started hemming and hawing, so the judge gave them a couple of hours to compile the complete list of clients. As it happens, someone was taking pictures of Cohen smoking cigars with some friends of his while this was going on. He was decidedly available. And yet, when the deadline had passed, Cohen's team wasn't able to provide the list or even a definite number. The judge, not amused, gave them until today to get the list, and to make sure that Cohen was in attendance.

Today, Cohen did show up in court, and his team had the list of all of his clients. Except, he didn't have thousands, or hundreds, or even tens of clients. He only had three. His team readily revealed what was already publicly known: Trump and Elliot Brody were two of Cohen's clients. But, they weren't willing to name the third. I don't know exactly what they cited, but the judge apparently wasn't having any of it. So, they revealed the third client: Sean Hannity.

Now, Sean Hannity is probably Trump's loudest stooge at Fox News. Especially since O'Reilly "retired." And as far as I know, he hasn't done anything illegal. But what a coincidence! Why hadn't Hannity ever disclosed this while (barely) reporting on the raid and the fallout? Is or was Cohen one of Hannity's "sources?" Are there other Trump connections within Fox News? Can you imagine the indignation and condemnation at Fox News if it had been, say, Anderson Cooper, instead?

It's a shame that what should be a crisis of integrity and credibility probably won't amount to much among Fox's ardent viewers. Hannity has already shrugged it off, tweeting that he's only ever asked Cohen for legal advice. About real estate. You know, kind of like Trump.

Edited to add: Oh, yeah, I had forgotten about Roger Stone -

Jules Suzdaltsev (Twitter Account) wrote:Remember when Julian Assange referenced “other channels” when he thought he was talking to Sean Hannity... then it turned out that Hannity and Trump share a lawyer... a lawyer that had direct ties to Assange through Roger Stone? Boy, we might have to build a whole new prison.

CNN pointed out an obvious thing which I did not realize until they pointed it out: Hannity's denial of attorney-client relationship with Cohen strikes a hard blow against Cohen's argument that he had any privileged documents among those seized by the FBI.